This invention relates to coin sensing apparatus and more particularly to apparatus for sensing groups of valid coins corresponding to a correct fare.
The present invention, while of general application, is particularly well suited for use at automatic toll collection stations for highways, bridges, tunnels, parking lots, etc. For these and other coin sensing applications it is particularly important to be able to distinguish between genuine coins and counterfeits such as metallic slugs or foreign coins and to ascertain when the number and denomination of the coins are equal to the correct fare.
Although various systems have been suggested to perform these tasks, such prior systems have not been entirely satisfactory. For example, many of the coin sensing systems utilized heretofore operated relatively slowly, and their capability to detect well made counterfeits was limited. In addition, the sensing systems previously employed often could only validate a limited number of different types of coins. Furthermore, and this has been of special moment for collection stations which are subject to heavy volume, a failure of a portion of the system rendered the entire station non-functional, and there was little or no way of periodically spot-checking the system to confirm the collection of the correct fare.